"Bottom line, somebody in the Trump administration is going to say 'we want NASA and the private sector to collectively, as sort of a national space enterprise, we want them to go further, we want them to go faster, we want them to go more frequently, and we want them to go less expensively," Muncy said.

SpaceX is poised for its next Starship megarocket test flight on Tuesday, with US President-elect Donald Trump expected to witness the second ever attempt to catch its descending booster stage in the launch tower's "chopstick" arms.